Despite an overall rise in combined revenue among the region's top design firms, executives continue to take a cautious view of the market. The top 75 design firms in Texas and Louisiana saw regional revenue hit a combined $2.97 billion last year, up from $2.57 billion in 2011—a nearly 16% increase. Notably, the top three firms in this year's ranking all performed a significant amount of work in the transportation sector, which has been robust in recent years.
"It's a stable to strong market," says Todd Papes, senior vice president with AECOM's Gulf Coast district office in Houston. Second in this year's ranking of the largest design firms, the firm generated $136.72 million regionally last year with 46% of that revenue from transportation projects. The firm's largest project to break ground last year was a $54.4-million streetcar rail expansion in New Orleans, on which AECOM performed the final engineering.